Morning, everyone….

Morning, everyone. Slightly warmer again and snowing gently after a couple of days of real cold. I am so very tired of winter.

Got my blood test results back -- looks like I may in fact be hypothyroid, though subclinical and only mildly symptomatic. They're probably going to start me on Synthroid anyway to head off unpleasant symptoms (exhaustion, cold intolerance, weight gain). Sounds fine to me -- it's just a hormone replacement, so no side effects.

Had a talk with Jordan this morning about one of his stories. Seems a reader had suggested some rewrites (which neither of us particularly minds (though neither do we often rewrite the story quite the way they want)) which among other things removed the condoms from the story. He thought it would be much more exciting to have 'gouts of semen spurting into her unprotected womb'...

We spent a while talking about that, and how strange it seems to both of us that some people write stories in which going without protection is exciting. I think most young women (except perhaps the lesbians :-) have known those weeks of alternating terror and gut-churning nausea as they wait to see if their period arrives after some stupid, risky (and I grant you, exciting, or they wouldn't have done it in the first place) unprotected sex. And even leaving aside the pregnancy issue, most people are (obviously) quite aware of the disease risks with new partners (especially the strangers that so often seem to wander into fantasies). While it's occasionally a relief to just ignore the whole issue in a story (which is, of course, fantasy rather than reality), making terror a known turn-on just seems highly unbelievable to me in that specific case, and the worst erotica is generally the unrealistic stuff.

All's well otherwise -- David made hummus yesterday, which was easier than I expected (boil chick peas until softened, then blend with lemon juice, tahini and garlic -- the only difficult bit is making the tahini if you choose to do that -- sesame seeds are somewhat expensive and hardish to find), and yummy with toasted pita bread. Came home after dinner and watched some tv and started a story, a fairy tale/parable type thing. Not sure where it's going, and it's a somewhat odd piece, set in a kind of Native American plains environment (anyone know what kind of birds can be found in the plains?).

Sent "Send in the Clown" to Aboriginal SF. Not sure if they're accepting stories again, but I think so.

My editor called from Puritan to say that he'd like an intro to the article -- just a paragraph or two. Will try, but not sure what to say!

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